Unlike the far off desert island that molded her, this island was all shiny, and new, and wet. Nestled safe in the downy warmth of her folded wings, golden eyes glared malevolently at the rainy landscape that bloomed so ubiquitously around her. She was in some, nameless forest--in fact, it was the same nameless forest she’d found four days ago, the same, nameless forest she’d thoughtlessly plunged into, and the same, nameless forest in which, shortly afterwards, she was forced to realize that she was hopelessly lost. She'd heard from a passing stranger (with an equally strange fascination for calipers) that there was supposed to be a city nearby, but--obviously--she hadn't found it. The rainstorm found her next, prompting her to find the nearest--and dryest--tree, but she’d been sitting on a branch of said tree for over an hour now, and the storm had only intensified. Balefully, she hooted to herself, fidgeting a little as her satchel continued to rub some of her feathers the wrong way. And yet, she didn't trust her surroundings enough to drop the damnable thing to the forest floor either.
Her satchel didn't hold much beyond some coins and another piece of cloth to wind about herself, but losing even that much would make this already stupid journey intolerable. The Anakalypsis. Just the word was enough to fill her with acerbic ire. She hadn’t wanted to go, at least not without her younger twin sister, but her mother and her “aunts” insisted. And, considering that they comprised the highest authority within her clan, the Furies, refusal wasn't an option.
“You have to do it, youngling,” she could hear them squawking inside her head.
“It’s for your own good and for that of the clan.”
“I know you want to stay with your sister, my child,” the memory of her mother chimed in, “but Anakalypsis has always been a solitary journey.”
Well, she didn’t care about what she “had to” do, or “the good of the clan”-- and she cared even less about tradition. All she could think about was Aello. Her twin sister was a lot softer than she was, a lot more timid. She’d been her sister’s protector her whole life up to this point. But now she was absent. The word burned accusingly in her mind, and she could have sworn that the amber pendant around her neck--a gift from Aello--grew heavier. She was absent, and she couldn’t return until Anakalypsis, this journey of self-actualization, was over.
Sounds easy, right? Surely, it was just a matter of putting in the time until it was safe to go back, and then telling the Furies all the BS they wanted to hear.
Wrong.
The whole point of Anakalypsis is that it ended almost on its own authority, or whenever she’d experienced enough of the rest of the world to become changed by it--and, ignoring the fact that she absolutely hated dishonesty, it was really easy for the Furies to spot a liar. Besides, they taught all fledglings that Anakalypsis engendered wisdom, and that wisdom was always the summit for which they all strove. Otherwise, they would be doomed to become like the others of their kind, those lesser harpies that lived off of vanity and wanton violence.
Their clan was different, and each one of them had to uphold that difference and cling to it.
So, there she was: stuck on a tree in a nameless forest, waiting for the rain to let up, so that she could continue with her stupid journey.